


Down Louisiana Way

by ilyena_sylph



Category: Louis L'Amour, Ride the River, The Sacketts
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-18
Updated: 2010-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:37:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Echo thought she wouldn't be leaving the Tennessee hills again, but one of her kin is in trouble, and no Sackett born ever resisted that call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down Louisiana Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhi Shaw (Gryphonrhi)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/gifts).



> For Gryphonrhi/Rhi, on my DW-versary.   
> Possibly the first in a longer piece, but should stand alone.

I hadn't thought, when I brought the gold from old Kin's friend on home, that I'd ever much leave again, especially not when Dorian had taken such a shine to me. But there's shine, and there's that some kinds of people just aren't much meant to mix. Dorian was a good, fine man, with more of Finian in him than either of them had thought -- but he was a city man, and I was born for the wild lands.

I hadn't been fool enough to set my cap on him just because his shoulders could turn my knees all to water... which doesn't mean it was easy the day he decided that life behind our younger mule and the plow and in the hills just didn't suit the way he'd been raised. I saw it comin', though. He went on back to the Settlements, 'fore we went and broke each other's hearts a'tryin' to fit together parts and ways that weren't ever gonna, an' I went back to my huntin', fishin', and the plow.

Uncle Regal healed up just fine from that scrap he had with the bear, and mother surely did appreciate the finer things we could buy in Knoxville or Nashville for her, and for the Cove. We put a bit of it into a bank with our cousins in Charleston keeping a weather eye on what was done with it, and put a good bit more in the ground, under signs only another Sackett would know, just in case something might happen to the three of us.

At twenty, I was gettin' too old to marry, but I didn't much mind. Father's brothers had had a passle of sons and daughters, if'n I ever got to needing somethin' too bad.... well. We take care of our own, no matter what the need. And need was what brought me down out of the hills again, four years after I'd first left. One of Uncle Pym's boys, John Micheal, was in trouble down Louisiana way, and someone had to go fish him out of it. Regal was halfway to South Carolina when the Tinker brought the word, so I headed on out.

I was selling off the mare I'd bought in Knoxville at a stockyard in Memphis when Trulove and Macon walked up on either side of me. "Cousin Echo," Trulove said, "word must've reached you quick, you gettin' here 'fore us."

"Trulove, Macon," I said, turning to smile up at all six-foot-six and six-foot-four of my strapping Clinch Mountain cousins. "It's good to see you both. John Micheal?"

"We was hopin' there weren't two of us in trouble, when we saw you," Macon said, before they hushed up so as I could finish dickering over the worth of the mare.

"Hush yourself, Macon, that'd be all we need, wouldn't it." I said as I turned from the horse trader to head towards the docks, carpet-bag in hand and my reticule around my wrist, both of them heavy with my pistols. The steamer would be coming before long, and we all ought to be getting along on it.

"Allow as you're right," Macon agreed -- he always did have sense, even if he was a Clinch Mountain boy.

Looking ahead at the passage station, I sighed a little, shaking my head, and slipped my fingers into my recticule. "Trulove, does that man up there look like he wouldn't much want to pay attention to a woman to you?"

Trulove studied on the stuffy little man with the monocle in his eye for a few moments, then nodded. "Yep."

"Here, then. Go on and book us, would you? I'm not much carin' for the idea of city people ignorin' me, today. Had one of those already." I said as I slipped a couple of the gold dollars into his hand, hiding them from other eyes with the reticule and the way we held our hands.

"More fool them, cousin," Macon said, hand easy on my shoulder, while Trulove dealt with our passage. "We're both right pleased to have caught up with you."

I smiled, quick and satisfied, and followed Trulove towards the shade of a big yellow-poplar, to wait for the steamer to come in.

We didn't know what trouble John Micheal had gotten himself into, but we were three Sacketts, and Mordecai would likely be along behind. Between the three of us, there could be little trouble we couldn't sort out. And either we would fetch him home, or we uns would fetch the ones that had brought him grief to their Maker.

And lord help whoever had made his trouble if Falcon made it to his brother afore the rest of us did.

***


End file.
